Commerce conducted over the Internet , most often via the World
Wide Web . E-commerce can apply to purchases made through the
Web or to business-to-business activities such as inventory transfers.
A customer can order items from a vendor's Web site, paying with
a credit card (the customer enters account information via the
computer) or with a previously established "cybercash"
account. The transaction information is transmitted (usually by
modem ) to a financial institution for payment clearance and to
the vendor for order fulfillment. Personal and account information
is kept confidential through the use of "secured transactions"
that use encryption technology.
In an effort to further the development of e-commerce, the federal
Electronic Signatures Act (2000) established uniform national
standards for determining the circumstances under which contracts
and notifications in electronic form are legally valid. Legal
standards were also specified regarding the use of an electronic
signature ( "an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached
to or logically associated with a contract or other record and
executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record"
), but the law did not specify technological standards for implementing
the act. The act gave electronic signatures a legal standing similar
to that of paper signatures, allowing contracts and other agreements,
such as those establishing a loan or brokerage account, to be
signed on line. |
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